Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time (PS3) Gameplay
10This is gameplay for Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time for the PS3. I'm playing the challenge mode of the game which is opened after you beat the game the first time, and allows you to play through the game again with harder enemies.
The platformer genre seems nearly dead in today's gaming world with only Nintendo and Insomniac being the two main companies that have even seemed to bother with big releases in the genre.
The Ratchet series is still my favorite Insomniac franchise, and for whatever reason I find it really hard to put a RnC game down once I start playing it. The series successfully mixes platform and shooter gameplay with RPG elements, and collecting for a reason. A lot of platformers over the years seem to want you to collect things, just for the sake of collecting them with no clear reason why. In the Ratchet games, you collect bolts to buy new weapons, and armor. They act as a form of currency. The items you collect that aren't bolts, also give you incentive to collect them, because they also give you upgraded stuff. There is real incentive to try and find everything in the game, and it keeps the collecting to a minimum.
As the series custom, once you beat the game the first time, you then open up the option to play through the challenge mode where you keep all your weapons, and items from the first quest, but them play through the game again in a harder quest. You can also buy upgraded weapons which will allow you to level them up to a higher level. As you use the weapons in the game, they gain levels and become more powerful. You can also find weapon upgrades that let you customize your weapons further.
The RPG elements in the game make it insanely addictive to me. The game is more platformer than shooter, or RPG, but the combined elements make for an extremely well designed game. If you were tired of Ratchet last gen, this one doesn't do a lot new, but maybe it's time to give the franchise another look. There isn't any online play, or coop of any sort, but there is a great single player mode. Granted, it only took me 11 hours to beat the game my first run, but that was without completely finding everything. Before I entered the challenge mode, I made sure I found everything in the game first.